[Freeciv-Dev] Re: K&R style (was Re: [PATCH] slight optimisation ...)

[Kevin Brown <kevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Trent Piepho <xyzzy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Aug 2001, Kevin Brown wrote:
> > > You want to go thought every single line of code making sure that indent
> > > actually made it look nicer than what was there before?
> > 
> > No.  Instead, we apply indent, and then whoever *actually cares about
> > it* can submit patches to fix the formatting.  What will actually
> > happen is that people will submit such patches as they notice areas
> > where the formatting is screwed up.
> 
> So you want to mess up the formatting and then have other people go in piece
> by piece and fix it up again?  Sounds like a lot of unnecessary
> work.  

It's no more work than what we have right now, which is to have the
patch submitters format their patches prior to submission.  The only
difference is who does the work and when it gets done.

If there's a comment or table in the code that gets messed up, but
which nobody reads, then my proposal will result in no effort being
expended to clean it up.  Simple, effective, and relatively
economical.

And besides, just how much code/comments can there be that would be
affected by this anyway???

> > > Back in 1998 we decided against this, and CVS had just been started
> > > up and there was a lot less code.  It would be an even worse idea
> > > now.  It's not like not having the exact same indention style is
> > > some kind of huge problem.  If half the code had 8 space indents and
> > > half had 2 spaces, or half was K&R braces and half had that
> > > butt-ugly GNU stair-step style then maybe it would be worth it.
> > 
> > This is not at all evident by the amount of discussion about
> > formatting on the list and the current insistence that patches be
> > properly formatted.
> 
> I'm not the one who's all anal about patch formatting be just the
> exact way they want.  

Oh, believe me, I'm with you on this one.  As far as I'm concerned,
the formatting of the code is pretty much irrelevant.  If I have to
work with it, I may change the bit I modify to suit my tastes and
that'll be reflected in my patches, but it's one of those things that
people just shouldn't have to worry about.

And that's really my point in all this.  If the CVS maintainers are so
concerned about the formatting of patches, then they can format the
patches themselves, or format the code that's affected by the patches
once they've applied them, or whatever.  But they shouldn't be
foisting that work onto the patch submitters, because there's no
point.

Frankly, I don't care if the code gets nicely formatted or not.  What
I'm proposing is a method to deal with this issue once and for all.
It has some drawbacks, but those drawbacks affect only those who
really care about the formatting to begin with, so what's the problem?

But as long as this issue *doesn't* get dealt with once and for all,
then we'll have people bitching about the formatting of someone's
patch, and, on occasion, patch rejections based on formatting and not
content.  And that's *insane*!

> There reason there is so much discussion is because formatting is
> one of those holy war things that no one will ever agree on.  It's
> also an easy thing to bitch about, because you can just look at some
> code and tell you don't like the formatting without thinking about
> it much.
>
> I'd also like to point out that not one other opensource project has
> a system of running indent automatically on every commit.  I think
> you're just worrying too much about something that isn't a problem.
> The system we came up with back in the beginning of 1998 when CVS
> was setup and freeciv only had 3 stars on linuxberg has worked just
> fine for a long time.

So you *agree* with making the patch submitters format their code to
certain standards, instead of having those who care (the CVS
maintainers) do it?  That's how it's done now, after all, and you say
it "works just fine".  I'm a bit confused about your stance on this...

I'd say that if patches are being rejected based on their formatting,
then the system *doesn't* "work just fine".  We want and need people
to contribute to the project.  We want them to deal with real issues,
not trivia like formatting.  The more time they deal with nonsense,
the less time they'll spend on the things that count.


-- 
Kevin Brown                                           kevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    It's really hard to define what "unexpected behavior" means when you're
                       talking about Windows.